An input speech signal picked up by a microphone can be corrupted by acoustic noise present in the environment surrounding the microphone (also referred to as background noise). If no attempt is made to mitigate the impact of the noise, the corruption of the input speech signal will result in a degradation of the perceived quality and intelligibility of its desired speech component when played back to a listener. The corruption of the input speech signal can also adversely impact the performance of speech coding and recognition algorithms.
One additional source of noise that can corrupt the input speech signal picked up by the microphone is wind. Wind causes turbulence in air flow and, if this turbulence impacts the microphone, it can result in the microphone picking up sound referred to as “wind noise.” In general, wind noise is bursty in nature and can last from a few milliseconds up to a few hundred milliseconds or more. Because wind noise is impulsive and can exceed the nominal amplitude of the desired speech component in the input speech signal, the presence of such noise will further degrade the perceived quality and intelligibility of the desired speech component when played back to a listener.
Therefore, what is needed is a system and method that can effectively detect and suppress wind and background noise components in an input speech signal to improve the perceived quality and intelligibility of a desired speech component in the input speech signal when played back to a listener.
The present invention will be described with reference to the accompanying drawings. The drawing in which an element first appears is typically indicated by the leftmost digit(s) in the corresponding reference number.